June 16, 2010

Low expectations for future of clinical data mining--a study

I picked this up from Fierce Health IT newsletter:

Anvita Health commissioned a newly released HIMSS Analytics study on clinical
data mining. HIMSS Analytics convened a focus group of CMOs and and CMIOs of
provider and payer organizations for the report.

Payers and providers alike generally don't often employ clinical data for
real-time decision-making, in part because information is in so many disparate
formats, some important data elements are missing and because they believe the
costs generally outweigh the benefits. "These challenges are consistent with
what we've seen and heard from our payer and provider customers," Noffsinger
explains. "Interoperability of data is a hurdle, but it's not
insurmountable."

"A key finding for us was that both payers and providers had limited
expectations for how clinical analytics could improve the quality of
patient
care--especially at the point of care--and lower costs through that
improved
quality," Richard Noffsinger, CEO of San Diego-based data analytics firm
Anvita
Health, says, Healthcare IT News reports. "Comprehensive
real-time
analytics can take these stakeholders beyond just evaluation, and
provide a
blueprint for action by physicians, care managers and others in the care
continuum."

One of the promises of the Health Care "Reform" bill rammed through Congress is that (unfunded but mandated) improvements in and use of health care information technology will lead to improved health and lower costs. What is interesting to me from this study is the "limited expectations" that both payers and providers have for data mining for routine clinical use. Such low expectations could lead to a "feedforward" feedback on the implementation of health IT creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where low expectations for IT improving quality of care leads to underutilization which fulfills the lower expectations, etc.